My Thoughts on Wikipedia's Policies, Guidelines, and Disclaimers:
One may not see Wikipedia's type of disclaimer in a traditional encyclopedia because the collaboration efforts in a traditional encyclopedia are by a few select professors and/or experts with credentials behind thier names. Michael Foucault's theory on empowerment may be applied here. The "knowledge" that these credentials have value in our society is what I would say is Foucauldian power. This isn't a bad thing, it is only something that should be recognized when considering Wikipedia as a credible encyclopedia. Those people who do not have credentials but do conribute to Wikipedia are turing the powers that be by sharing in the a global discourse of knowledge. As a global society, we have become accustom to accepting traditionally published discourse as reliable because we believe that the time involved in editing and publishing must be less prone to error, misinforming, or that the authors are priveledged to knowledge.
I accept that Wikipedia’s goal is to inform, to share knowledge: Wikipeida is “a non-profit organization with the goal of providing free knowledge to every person in the world [...] a voluntary association of individuals and groups who are developing a common resource of human knowledge,” and they promote editing in good faith in order to present unbiased views of verifiable facts in order to produce a reliable encyclopedia for students or anyone to use as a starting point to instigate further research (Wikipeida).
Wikipedia has made their intent clear from my point of view in that they aim to provide the same variety of information as traditional encyclopedias and they expect contributing writers provide no original research and to cite their sources.
Not knowing an author's credentials is one of the debates against Wikipedia. I rest on the idea that most who participate are doing so out of good will. While some of Wikipeidia’s entries have no citation of reference, most do. In a twenty minute period, I hyperlinked through about ten entries and of those ten, eight had source reference citations and of the two, one of which I'll recreate now wasn't under suspicion: candy canes. "Candy cans" may not of had tradiitonal references but the information describing "candy canes" did: Peppermint and references. "Candy canes" has one more thing going for it, it has what Wikipeida calls "Earthlinks" at the bottom of the page. These are links you so associative information : Candycane Facts.com and The Tradition of the Candy cane.
Brian Lamb addresses the fear most have about their text being edited and how this fear is misplaced in his article, “Wide Open Spaces: Wikis Ready or Not.” Lamb argues that like anything new, we as a society and global community should question the intentions and integrity of information available and he cites SoftSecurity's motto:
Think of an open wiki space as a home that leaves its front door unlocked but doesn’t get robbed because the neighbors are all out on their front steps gossiping, keeping a friendly eye on the street, and never missing a thing. This ethic is at the heart of ““SoftSecurity,”” which relies on the community, rather than technology, to enforce order. (Lamb 40)
I also agree with Lamb when he describes this type of "unlocked" collaboration in context with “Darwinism” (42) where Lamb argues how irrelevant or debatable entries will balance out because is takes conflict to promote understanding and at the same time it keeps words and meaning alive and ideas evolving. The realization that text is always changing in meaning and context may be a hard idea to grasp if one keeps thier "front door[s]" always locked. It is difficult to refute that at some point in written discourse a balance or agreement by consensus becomes inherent and once this consensus is agreed upon it doesn’t mean that the ideal is closed for further discourse and/or change.
There is no perfect system of absolute unbiased research yet from a basic humanitarian point of view, we as a people have an underlying expectation of good will and most people are seeking evolvement of ideas and information that will better humankind. What this means for Wikipeidia is that the entries presented are no better or worse than the closed room research conducted by academia and that’s found in traditional encyclopedias. Wikipedia has opened its doors to our global community and has become a space where instructors may take advantage of its free access in order to prepare college students to become better critical writers and research experts.
In conclusion, one controls set in Wikipedia's policy is confusing "no original research": "Articles may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new analysis or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas that serves to advance a position." In this sense, Wikipedia's "front door" is not always open but the policy must be a misnomer (see my research paper).
In this site , I will expand Wikipeida's rule of "no original research" by exploring the literary theory of new historicism and maybe this will open the doors further on Wikipeida's site by creating an appendix of other researh.
Work Cited
Lamb, Brian. “Wide Open Spaces: Wikis Ready or Not.” Educause Review: September/October 2004 37-48. <http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=1667&Comments=404 >